A Lady Ashmo Adventure

How I Met Your Mother in Review

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the last season of How I Met Your Mother through to the end, then you do not want to read this until you have. Go on. Go away, and come back when you finished watching.

Okay, now that you have watched it through to the end I can discuss the story line of the final episodes with you.

I believe that the writers of How I Met Your Mother made a huge mistake with the final episodes. To be fair, this is the opinion of someone who has never written a screenplay, and I certainly never managed to score millions of fans. And in the interest of fairness, the writers managed to keep me engaged and loyal for 9 long years. I wept with Marshal and Lily when Lily ran off to San Francisco. I laughed when Ted stole that horrible blue French horn for Robyn. I was sad when Robyn and Barney broke up, and then again when Robyn didn’t leave her shrink boyfriend. I felt joy when Barney proposed to Robyn, and I loved that their wedding day was the day that Ted finally met his children’s beautiful mother.

The writers did their job in that I learned to love each of the characters they introduced. They kept me on the edge of my seat hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl with the yellow umbrella. I marathon watched the final season dying to see that iconic moment we have been waiting for these past 9 seasons.

And then the writers went and pooped all over it.

In the final episodes barney and Robyn (you know, the couple we spent the entire season hoping to see get married) end up divorced after just 3 short years together. Robyn chooses her career consistently over her marriage, and Barney is obviously very unhappy. Barney goes back to being a certifiable man-whore, negating all of the personal growth I had become emotionally invested in. I honestly think it would have been better if the writers had just led us to believe they had gotten divorced (rather than showing us the heartbreaking moment) and that they remained friends. Maybe Barney could have retained at least a shred of the human decency that we had witnessed him develop over the past few years. While he did end up with a daughter who is the love of his life, the writers seem to have forgotten how much Barney loves babies when Barney freaks out and tries not to claim his daughter. I disliked how the end of Barney’s story left him only a few steps away from where he began. I found I didn’t like him at all by the time his story was done.

Robyn also disappointed me. She goes MIA on the important moments with her friends, and pretty much dumps a very pregnant and ridiculously dressed Lily. She embodies the cliché of a friend who goes off to get famous and forgets the people who were there for her when she wasn’t.

But all that aside, at least the story ended where it should have with the rest of the bunch. I mean, Lily and Marshall are together forever, and have wonderful children who mean the world to them. And ted and his wife…

Oh wait, he didn’t bother to marry her for seven years after they started having kids?! When he finally does, it’s a hasty, half-assed, next-Thursday-if-you-have-time affair. Then, we discover that she gets sick and dies. To me, this cheapened the entire 9 year journey. The whole thing was supposed to be a goofy, funny, drawn out love story. The show is even titled, “How I Met Your Mother”. But in the end, the kids mother was not the point at all.

No, Ted is asking his children permission to date their Aunt Robyn. You know, the woman who broke Ted’s heart on multiple occasions. The woman who doesn’t want the same things from life as Ted. The woman who sabotaged her marriage to a man who adored her enough to change his personality. The woman who dumped her best friends. The woman who Ted let go of by giving the locket to Barney. Her?

What was the point? Ted ended up being that same guy hung up on the girl who is all wrong for him. Robyn is still that selfish girl who refuses to do anything that doesn’t work for her. Barney ends up a dad, okay fine. But he reverted for a while, and I hate that he didn’t try to make it work with a woman he supposedly loved. The only people I liked at the end of the final season were Marshal and Lily. The season finale made me sorry I watched any of it at all.

I get that the writers had to do something drastic to surprise us. After all, we spent 9 years expecting to hear the happy end to a long love story. It was a twist. I’ll give them credit where credit is due, I did not predict the ending. But still, It sucks that my favorite television series since friends left me sad and angry with no hope of recovery.

Oh and by the way, they could have at least explained the pineapple. Just sayin’.